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Nero Cloud Backups Fail with No Indication using Nero 2014 BackItUp

I've made two attempts to back up a folder containing 25 1.5 GB files. Both failed with absolutely no indication of failure. Moreover, in both cases my computer was indicating a constant stream of Wi-Fi send activity hours after the BackItUp program had given up. I did find a log file that reports the problems.

I've been through this download thing before from pogo. I can't remember what I did to download a file. Right now when I try to download it says it's called "data" with a size of 213 Kb. Perhaps you can remind me.

I just tried to backup your little files and it worked successfully.
I can see all of them showing 11.5KB on the web client. I just restored the files through the PC client and all of them restored successfully.

Again - I'm not saying there is no problem - but - this is not a generic issue.

And the backup completed successfully with all files up there :).
Not sure if there are other users with the same type of issues that you're seeing but for some reasons both scenarios are working fine for me.
I'd like to find out what's going wrong on your side though.

So this issue also is not a generic issue - just stating this again as there've been a number of comments such as ".. people are paying for this.. ".
I understand that there are issues and we'll do whatever we can to address those - but believe me that what you're seeing in your configuration is not necessarily what more than 70,000 other users are seeing in their configurations.
If Nero BackItUp would fail for every user in the cases that you describe, I guess we'd see a lot more of these users here on the forum as well.

As noted in my next post below, I was able to upload and restore his files but the restore took twice as long as the upload. That's clearly a problem. I have experienced several other problems with this version which are unacceptable. I've been meaning to send an e-mail to tech support but haven't gotten to it yet.

Above, you said, "So this issue also is not a generic issue - just stating this again as there've been a number of comments such as ".. people are paying for this.. ".
I understand that there are issues and we'll do whatever we can to address those - but believe me that what you're seeing in your configuration is not necessarily what more than 70,000 other users are seeing in their configurations.
If Nero BackItUp would fail for every user in the cases that you describe, I guess we'd see a lot more of these users here on the forum as well."

And I say:

In the main, this topic is about BackItUp failures that are not reported on the screen. So, perhaps, there are 69,999 users that aren't even aware that their backups are incomplete.

When you create a "new" backup, are you doing it from the "File Backup Jobs" screen where it says "Create new backup", or are you doing what I did for a while? That would be to simply click on "Source" on the home screen and then give the backup a different name later. I wondered where the backups went, when I brushed my .... Well, anyway, that just keeps renaming the same backup job.

When I did the restore to the original folder with replacing the original files it took 10 min 56 sec. However, I have another backup job in v12 and I think it was running at the same time and it backs up those folders as part of it.

Wither 1,
I always do the restore to a fresh directory for these little tests. I repeated the "little files" restore later in the day and it was much better, but still totally unsatisfactory. Where's Patrick?

I had to raise a little ruckus with TWC today. For the past four years, I've had a two year price guarantee which they renew every two years (surprise). They didn't do that this year. I received a bill which increased 32 dollars with one of those hand waving explanations. They had dropped the discounts I was getting. The cost of TV went up two dollars. The only thing I could figure is the remaining increase was for Internet. Sure enough, that was it. However, the price they raised it was $10 higher than advertised on line. I managed to get that $10/mo back. Can't wait to see what happens to prices if the TWC/Comcast deal goes through this year.

I did a restore of the same files in a lot less time, but I didn't record anything. I do recall that "15 files couldn't be restored." was only "12 files couldn't be restored."

Totally unsatisfactory means that it still was no where near usable, and, apparently not repeatable or reliable. In your case, downloading took more time than uploading when your ISP quotes a download speed 15 times greater than your upload speed. Is that "totally unsatisfactory"?

No, I got the same service as I've always had. It serves my purposes. Only problem is that the folks you call at Billing aren't the on-line people and they don't see the on-line offers. As a result, they were trying to charge me more than the on-line rate. Got that fixed.

This morning, Backitup is telling me it's out of date. I tried to run the check for updates but the server wasn't available. Perhaps you can check for an update.

This afternoon, on a whim, I tried a backup/restore cycle of my folder containing 500 ~12 KB files, about 6 MB total. Upload took about 15 minutes this time and reported success by raising a notification in the lower right of the screen for a few seconds. However, as happened 5 days ago, the backup was actually not a success. Five of the 500 files have a length of zero (last time there were twelve. I found this after the restore operation failed. As it did 5 days ago, the log indicated, "15:56:38 Backup process completed successfully.", even though there were failures reported earlier in the log.

The restore operation took about 100 minutes and reported failure by raising a notification in the lower right of the screen for a few seconds. There was no other indication remaining if that one was missed.

A partial listing of the "restored" folder:

Hopefully, some acknowledgement of these issues will be forthcoming, and more importantly, some fixes!

More advice? Well, it seems that you have experienced the very same difficulties that I have described and, in light of the fact that you have the advantage of having the ear of the upper management of Nero, perhaps it would be more effective for you to simply give them a ring.

I don't have a phone number. All my correspondence is via e-mail and 99.9% of the time,I don't communicate with management unless they initiate it. Problems are for tech support to resolve. The only reason I didn't send an e-mail to tech support on the screwy interface is because Patrick acknowledged they have seen it in XP also and are working on it. As I've said before, I leave it to the person who initiates a thread to send the e-mails. I recently deviated from that in one case and tech support has communicated with me several times on it.

To "make sure that all areas that need to be fixed are clearly identified to them", I have listed them in various topics on this forum. That's the whole purpose. Aside from Patrick, there are apparently at least 31 other Nero employees "participating" in this forum. My assumption is that they are concerned about the quality of the product they are offering and will see to it that the issues are reported to the developers.

As I've asked before, if they dismiss the issues on this forum, who exactly is hurt?

I think you have probably observed that there are not 31 employees interacting in the forum. I think the number is 5 or 6. I was just making a suggestion. If a new version comes out and doesn't cover all your concerns, you'll have to wait for another one. It's up to you.

You've certainly seen the "Nero AG employees are here to help" image at the top of the forum home page and the indication lower that 32 Nero employees are members.

As I see it, Jens is the only Nero employee that consistently tries to help. And, as you say there are only a few others that make even intermittent attempts. However, none of that precludes the possibility that the others "observe and report."

Sending email to Tech Support is not very productive in my experience. Sending email about this topic would seem to be a pointless exercise since there is absolutely nothing a person in Tech Support can do. No .CAB files, screenshot, steps to reproduce, or any other form letter request would contribute anything to the solution of the BackItUp issues identified.

Here are some of the BackItUp issues:

1. Backup/restore is unreliable.

2. Success is reported even when failures occur.

3. Backup/restore is slooooooow! The incredible thing about this is that downloading is vastly slower than uploading.

4. Aside from the momentary notification that pops up as a backup or restore completes, there is no status indication to the user that doesn't "sit and watch."

5. There is a log of BackItUp operations that is kept "secretly." Furthermore, the log is not individualized per job, but a long continuous stream that I presume must be cleaned up by the user who is unaware of its existence.

6. Using the Nero cloud upload/download capabilities after logging in on the web page is not secure.

7. Downloading from the web site is extraordinarily slow if signed in.

8. Although it is true that there is no guarantee that your backed up data will exist even two minutes after it's been uploaded, that fact is pretty much hidden - sort of a caveat emptor!

Note that in this topic, we are not talking about some minor discrepancy as I reported here: Nero MediaHome Crashes Looking for Menu Pages?. No, in this topic, we are discussing a capability being sold as a method to preserve a user's data. And, that user probably assumes that the facility has been thoroughly tested, as opposed to the actual situation being documented here. It's difficult to understand what "process" is in place that would allow the release of this particular product in the state it is in, let alone after several "updates."

In conclusion, let me just say that these issues are for Nero's developers and those at Pogoplug, not smurfs.

I appreciate the time you're taking to test and troubleshoot Nero BackItUp.
Overall I don't feel the forum is the perfect place to discuss such specific issues. While they result in user problems at the end of the day - it's unlikely that these are things that can be sorted out between users (that's one of the reasons to have a forum). It's great having you guys here, helping out whereever you can with problems other users described an have.

For these specific tests and reports I'd like to propose a different way of communication though. If you're continuously willing to spend time on testing and reporting these types of scenarios, I'd like to add you to some kind of beta program (which doesn't really exist yet). For this, I'd make sure to give you access to RC versions and we would stay in direct contact through email. Please let me know what you think.

For the issues reported and also summarized above:
- Performance: We do have regular performance evaluations for the up- and download speeds through various connections. As you can also see from my own test results in the other thread - I / we are not able to see this tremendous performance issues. I'm not saying there is no problem, the issue is though that also compared to other services, I'm not able to find scenarios where our service performs as bad as reported by you Omega Tester. I ran a number of tests and I'm able to upload and download with up to 100Mbit/s.
We do have confirmation though that there is an intended difference (when load is high) in downloading speed depending on whether you are logged in (faster) or not (slower) which is to give customers on their own account priority over shared assets.

- Backup: We do have a known issue that files >4GB can't be backed up through the Nero BackItUp PC client right now. We're working with high prio on this issue and we'll release an update to address this soon. Using our web client I was able to successfully up and download a 60GB file (just to proof that there is no generic issue)

- Integrity of online backups: Files that fail to upload, return an error, in such case we'll retry or otherwise skip the file which will result in either a failed or a partially successful (orange) backup. I'll try to run tests with the set of files you provided here. Overall there shouldn't be any issue with either of the file sets.

- SSL in the web client: I hoped to get this fixed earlier. It's on our list. Backup and restore through the PC client are handled via SSL.

I'll also get back to you in the specific threads but pls. let's try to not mix topics or refer to other problems in each and every thread around BackItUp.

Thanks again for your time and feedback - I'm aware that depending on the usage scenario a couple of things are not yet where they need to be, it's our top priority to iron those out.

Not sure - what I was referring to is beta testing new versions before they get released to the market. As we're seeing a couple of very specific problems on your side that we can't reproduce but would still like to address - I see this as a chance to validate potential fixes.

Having noticed some improvement in download speeds, I tried more tests. I've been able to do the backup/restore of the folder containing 500 little files successfully several times. Not so good with the 1.5 GB files. After deleting all of my backups including the cloud files, I started over. My first test was an attempt to backup the first five big files. It failed, and contrary to this topic's title, it indicated that it failed:

Later, I tried a similar backup of files 6-10. It failed also, but with no indication except for the momentary pop-up in the lower right hand corner of the screen:

I don't know what other people (besides those reporting or responding in this forum) are experiencing, but I've had enough problems with Backitup 2014 that I'd never recommend it to anyone. This is on Vista. I don't know if I can use my cloud account on my Win 7 system or if I have to get a different account.

Somebody named OOOOOOOOOOOO (I don't know how many O's or if they're 0's liked my comment on June 10, 2014. As noted below, the latest update fixed my problems so this comment is now N/A. Just wanted that person to know.

Above, you said, "Integrity of online backups: Files that fail to upload, return an error, in such case we'll retry or otherwise skip the file which will result in either a failed or a partially successful (orange) backup. ...."

First, this topic discusses the "fact" that there is no indication when a failure occurs (ignoring the momentary pop-up). Since I deleted all of my backup jobs, I have now seen the "orange" on the first new job I submitted. After a little playing, I'll mention these observations:

1. If a "new" backup job is run from the "File Backup Jobs" screen without checking "Show on Home screen", everything I have noted previously is true. Also, switching to the Home screen while the backup is in process shows the status of the last "Home screen" backup done, not the currently running backup - in other words, no updating.

2. If a "new" backup job is run from the "File Backup Jobs" screen and "Show on Home screen" is checked, switching to the Home screen during the backup shows the progress in real time and indicates a failure if it occurs.

3. If a failure occurs and is indicated on the Home screen in "orange", there is a corresponding red X shown on the "File Backup Jobs" page ONLY for the initial backup. In other words, in scenario 2, there will be no indication.

I'm sure there is more strangeness in this regard, but let's move on to the testing my computer completed last night while I watched TV.

Again, you have said, "So this issue also is not a generic issue". Perhaps, it is possible for there to be a "generic issue" that your limited testing cannot detect. I think that the recent postings by other users probably raise your suspicions.

I attempted a backup of only 5 of my 1.5 GB files. It failed as usual. The log indicates that the Nero software tries to create the files 3 times (if an error occurs) and then gives up. This happened on my files numbered 001, 002, and 003. It appears that files 004 and 005 were created and writing began. Then, there was a "connection with the server was reset" while writing to file 004, ending its backup. Finally, some time later, file 005's backup was completed successfully. So, that's a success rate of 20%.

Here's an edited version of the log:

Here are the results of some speed tests I have done for your perusal:

Hi,
Thanks for reporting and retrying this.
As said earlier - your reports give sufficient evidence that something is going wrong in your scenario. We need to and will try to address this.
I'll get back to you once we do have a potential fix available, maybe in a pre-version (if you're willing to give that a try).

While going about my business here, I have done a few more "little tests". I did the 500 little file backup/restore successfully, then "successfully NOT". I followed that with an attempt at backing up a folder with 200 little files. That one "succeeded NOT." For this last test, I can assure you that I was sitting back watching TV "coverage" of the missing Malaysian plane, not touching the keyboard or touchpad. Also, let me just mention that my furnace was off the entire time so I think electrical interference from the fan, etc., can be eliminated. Add to that the fact that my wife wasn't on the internet.

For reasons I will gladly explain when I have a little more time, I have no interest whatsoever in participating in any pre-version testing of Nero products. If Nero doesn't have sufficient resources available to test their products, there are many companies out there that would be more than happy to help. A simple Google of "software testing service" is a starting point.

I do want to propose an alternative approach. I assume that Nero is using some sort of source code tracking methodology that enables a "restart" from any given point in time. I would suggest that an immediate "update" be made generally available that improves the reporting of failures in the current release starting with the last build "released" to the paying public. Then, it will become clear to you, me, and everyone else involved whether the issues are "my issues" or "generic" issues. I am quite confident the latter is the case. And, if I am correct, the other 69,999 users will become aware of the situation.

I thought I would take a moment to expand on my "alternative" above. Obviously, I think an update should be issued ASAP that no longer reports success when a failure has occurred. IMHO, other desirable changes:

1. When failures occur, expand on the information. E.G., if 4 files couldn't be backed up, which ones?
2. If a backup fails, what next?
3. Individual backup log files for each backup with a link provided in a newly added "Status" field or dialog box.
4. Similar things for the restore process.

3. It is possible you have to restart your computer before doing the following steps
4. Type secpol.msc in the Start Menu and press Enter.
5. Double click on Local Policies then double click on Security Options.
6. Scroll to the bottom to this entry -
"User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin approval mode."
7. Double click the line
8. Set it to disabled then press OK.
9. Reboot.

How to test that it works? Open a regular command prompt. Run this command, which you can stop anytime.

sfc /scannow (if you've done the above steps you should not be denied"

Thank you for the information, but I am never anything but the administrator. Moreover, rather than blindly trust Nero on their cloud backup, I have been periodically running little backup jobs, each involving a single folder. One of them has 5 identical 1.5 GB files; the other has 500 identical 12 KB files. It's a very rare occasion when I can successfully backup either; and, in the event the backup does complete "successfully", there are sometimes a number of empty files; moreover, if the files are all 12 KB long, restoring them all in also problematic. I have uploaded a small .zip with the 500 little files for the convenience of anyone who cares to check.

Well, for that information, one must dig through the "hidden" log file. By :hidden", I mean that there is no indication anywhere that I can find informing the user of the existence of it, what it contains, etc. In fact, it contains a rambling stream of data from every single backup/sync job done since the last time it was deleted. I have a small batch file that I use to sort out successes and failures, etc, after deleting all of the irrelevant backup jobs. I will conclude this topic with a partial listing of only the "successful" and "failed" files, leaving out the numerous failures messages.

Before that, I'll just mention that making a new folder of 5 large (800 GB or more) identical files is faster than trying to download them, so I haven't uploaded one.

And, one more thing I should mention is the excruciatingly slow backups I sometimes encounter. Today, it took 15 minutes. Here's the promised summary:

After yesterday's failure of the backup of the 500 little file folder, I was able to do it successfully several times during random drive-bys. However, after a failed backup this morning of 5 1.5 GB files and a subsequent inability to access my cloud until I restarted my computer, I tried to backup a folder of 200 little files. It failed. I tried again. It succeeded. It tried to restore the files. It failed. I tried again. It succeeded.

What a system!!!

So, here's my first attempt to backup 200 little files today:

find/i "backup process " NeroBackItUp.txt

---------- NEROBACKITUP.TXT
10:43:12 Backup process finished but some file(s) could not be backed up successfully.

Thisl looks like a pogoplug cloud problem I had last year, when files suddenly went to 0 bytes after I uploaded them. Finally gave up and asked for a refund. Looks like they still haven't fixed the problem.

I can say that, after the update this morning, Backitup 2014 is working as it should on my Vista system so that appears to be fixed. I created a new .5 Gb backup and, if the estimated time turns out to be correct, it's updating at my expected upload rate.

I noticed however, that it still says it's v15.0.29 which is the version I used long ago.

The original issue discussed here had to do with zero length files being left in the cloud but reported as successfully uploaded. That hasn't occurred for a long time, even before today's update.

However, a similar situation exists when a restore operation fails. A notification appears for a few seconds in the lower right of the screen and goes away, leaving no visible indication whatsoever that a failure has occurred!

This topic was originally posted to report that backups leaving zero length files in the cloud were being reported as successful. This hasn't happened to me for a long while, before and after today's update.

However, a somewhat similar issue exists when restoring backups. If the restore fails, there is a notification that pops up for a few seconds in the lower right of the screen. After it disappears, there is no visible indication that a failure has occurred.

It is understood that this is an issue and might go unnoticed. We'll be addressing this in the next couple of months.
Indicating the backup status correctly and making sure backups work as expected was a higher priority to us.